Snack Attack and Other Adventures in the South
- A Tennessee couple was charged with domestic assault after they threw Cheetos at each other. Oh excuse me, allegedly threw Cheetos at each other. Maybe their orange fingers will be useful, as evidence. (Shelbyville Times-Gazette)
- Responding to an earlier complaint, Georgia park rangers arrested Mark Musselwhite, the former mayor of Gainesville, after they found him wandering around his campsite in the nude. Mayor Musselwhite claims that the complaint was not about him but rather some other nekkid guy in the same campsite. Seriously, this is his defense. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
- Mark Sanford’s tax-payer trip to South America was only supposed to be to Brazil, but South Carolina’s Commerce Department added Argentina to the itinerary at Sanford’s request, so he could get laid. Clearly Sanford was thinking with the wrong head (ahem.) because his little visit to Argentina was contradictory to offical federal policy, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. Oh, the things we do for sex love. (AP/McClatchy)
- A Louisville pastor has asked his congregants to bring their guns to church today because WWJD, right? And then they’re all gonna show those “meek” a thing or two about who’s really gonna inherit the earth. (MSNBC)
6/27/09 6:10 pm | | Permalink | Tags: Argentina, Cheetos, Christianity, Georgia, guns, Kentucky, Mark Musselwhite, Mark Sanford, naked, South Carolina, Tennessee
Court Overturns DC Gun Ban
Via The Washington Post, the AP is reporting that the Supreme Court has struck down Washington DC’s three decade-old handgun ban.
Details are still rolling in and will be posted as I get them. They’re reporting a 5-4 decision (shocker!), and I’m guessing Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy.
Update 1: Just in, the decision was written by Justice Antonin “Fuck You” Scalia. Apparently the Second Amendment trumps everything else. No surprise there.
Update 2: I win! Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, and Thomas joined Scalia on the opinion. But that was too easy.
Update 3: Transcript (PDF) or oral arguments from the case. (via DKos’ AdamB)
Update 4: The opinion (PDF) is now available. From SCOTUSblog:
In District of Columbia v. Heller (07-290), the Court nullified two provisions of the city of Washington’s strict 1976 gun control law: a flat ban on possessing a gun in one’s home, and a requirement that any gun — except one kept at a business — must be unloaded and disassembled or have a trigger lock in place. The Court said it was not passing on a part of the law requiring that guns be licensed. It said that issuing a license to a handgun owner, so the weapon can be used at home, would be a sufficient remedy for the Second Amendment violation of denying any access to a handgun.
While the declaration of the individual right was clear-cut, as was the decision’s nullification of key parts of the Washington, D.C., law, the Court did not lay down a standard for judging the constitutionality of any other federal laws — an omission that the dissenters attacked strongly. Even so, the opinion made it clear that, whatever ultimate test emerge, it probably would be a tough one to meet, at least when self-defense is at issue. As Justice Scalia put it, whatever remains for “future evaluation” about the strength of the right, “it surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.”
Update 5: Justice Kennedy’s reasoning behind voting to strike down the gun ban: BEARS!
But who knew that a case testing the scope of the Second Amendment’s “right to bear arms” would smoke out a secret side of Justice Anthony Kennedy? A side so intensely protective of his right to self-defense that he makes—as I count—four separate references to some mythical “remote settler” who—at the time of the framing of the Constitution—would have needed a gun to “defend himself and his family against hostile Indian tribes and outlaws, wolves and bears, and grizzlies.”
6/26/08 7:30 am | | Permalink | Tags: guns, Supreme Court, Washington D.C.
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